Ask Jeeves
promotes its toolbar software via banner ads shown on sites offering kids
games. In the course of such installations AJ never affirmatively shows
its license agreement, nor does it use the word "toolbar" to
describe the software to be installed. Users with XP SP2 may not even
see a reference to an AJ license agreement.

Installation on a game site catering to kids.
Installation details page. Euphemisms. No on-screen link to license.
Installation confirmation. Can install without seeing license.
New toolbar added to browser. No disclosure used the word "toolbar."

Ask Jeeves distributes a variety of programs that offer users some trinket
of apparent value (e.g. smileys for email programs) while also adding an extra
toolbar to users' web browsers. Ask Jeeves promotes these programs in ways that
do not entail meaningful user consent. This article examines one such installation,
its methods, its (purported) license agreement, and its effects. Notable characteristics:

Failure to affirmatively show a license agreement. On XP SP2,
failure even to alert users to a license agreement. Details.

Targeting Kids

I have observed Ask Jeeves software promoted at a variety of sites clearly
targeted at kids. This page documents AJ ads at Playloader.com, which describes
itself as offering "free online games." Of course, not all online
games are specifically targeted at kids. But the games at this site are clearly
for kids; they are cartoon games with names like "Skoolrush" (s.i.c.),
"Monkey Slide," "Lunar Mouse House," and "Junk Food
Jack." Furthermore, the Ask Jeeves ad is likely to be particularly attractive
to kids -- with overstated smiley faces, cartoon characters, and the like.

What's the big deal about offering software via methods that tend to reach
children? For one, children generally cannot enter into contracts -- so even
if a child clicks the "Yes" button Ask Jeeves subsequently presents,
its license terms may not be binding. Also, children may be less able to assess
the merits of an Ask Jeeves offer -- less able to determine whether Ask Jeeves
software is a good value, less likely to realize the privacy and other consequences
of installing such software, less inclined to examine a lengthy license agreement.

Interestingly, the next-to-last paragraph of Ask Jeeves' 108-paragraph, 6,251-word
license agreement does
state a limitation on the ages of permissible users: "If you are under
13 ... you may not download." But as discussed below, Ask Jeeves does not
affirmatively show users this license, and in some cases it fails even to link
to this agreement. No provision in Ask Jeeves' prominent text imposes any limitation
on user age.

Euphemisms and Half-Hearted Disclosures

Ask Jeeves' installers use a variety of euphemisms to avoid telling users the
true effects of Ask Jeeves' programs.

For example, one Ask Jeeves disclosure admits that Smiley Central "comes
with FREE MyWebSearch accessible directly from your browser." See second
screenshot above. This disclosure fails to use the ordinary term for MyWebSearch,
i.e. a "toolbar."

A user told of a feature "accessible ... from [a] browser" cannot
reasonably know that the true effect of the feature is to take on-screen space
and to reduce the amount of screen space available for other purposes.

Ask Jeeves' installers also fail to give users enough information to let them
decide whether the offered software is useful and whether users in fact want
it. For example, the only description of MyWebSearch that AJ shows is that the
program is "free" and "accessible directly from [a user's] browser."
But what does MyWebSearch actually do? Ask Jeeves disclosures don't say.

License Agreement - Not Shown or Linked
To

In the installation shown in the thumbnails at right, the Ask Jeeves license
agreement is never actually presented to users.

The installation details page does offer a link to the license, but this link
is off-screen on web browsers running at 800x600 resolution. Users must therefore
scroll even to see the link to the license -- and then must affirmatively click
to read it.

The installation confirmation screen does offer a link to the license. But
the link is not labeled with any mention of the license. Instead, the link is
labeled only "Smiley Central, My Web Search, Search Assistant, ..."
See third inset image at right. Without any on-screen
text alerting users to the link's significance or effects, users cannot reasonably
know that they can (or are expected to) click on this link to learn of additional
conditions to which they are (purportedly) bound.

If a user presses "Install" in the installation confirmation screen,
the AJ install proceeds immediately. A user has no further opportunity to cancel
or decline installation.

Users without XP Service Pack 2 get a different license installation confirmation
screen that does link to the license and that does label its link. See non-SP2
alternative confirmation screen. But in this variant, the link's labeling
is so convoluted that it becomes hard to read and understand: The link is a
single 41-word sentence, with three independent clauses and six verbs. Furthermore,
the link describes an "installer" -- suggesting that further description,
disclosure, and confirmation may occur if a user presses yes, giving the user
an additional opportunity to cancel. In fact, if a user presses Yes, the install
proceeds immediately, giving users no further opportunity to cancel installation.

Other Installation Methods

The installation described on this page includes what
I've called an "installation details" screen, giving users four bullet
points of information (however sterilized with euphemisms) about Ask Jeeves's
software. But not all Ask Jeeves installations include this step. See, for example,
an AJ ActiveX installation prompt I received while
browsing the iowrestling.com site in March 2005. A single press of the Yes button
in that popup installs AJ software immediately -- without any further information,
disclosures, or confirmation.

Some Ask Jeeves installations occur without giving the affected user any notice,
nor requesting or obtaining any consent. See a video
of such an installation of an AJ toolbar.

Some Ask Jeeves installations come in bundles with other programs. See my analysis
of the iMesh installation, which installs
an AJ toolbar without using the word "toolbar" anywhere in the lengthy
license agreement. See my analysis of the Kazaa
installation, which installs an AJ toolbar without first showing a license
agreement. Kazaa users wanting to see the AJ license must request the counterintuitively-named
"Altnet" license agreement, then scroll to page 48, where the AJ license
begins.